‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ S14E9 Recap: Down At The Menzeses In Drag-Conference
Some queens may be born to do drag, but they're not born to be panelists. But when they lip-sync like that, who cares?
RuPaul’s cross-promotion race continues, as this week the queens partake in mock Drag Con panels on men, a blend of AS6’s Pink Table Talk and S10’s own Drag Con panel challenge, though that was based more around drag tips than serious conversations. It was both the perfect and least-perfect thing to watch at 4.30am on Saturday night after coming home from Mardi Gras: it had the same cadence as a coming-up D&M filled with non-sequiturs and awkward segues, as people wait for their turn to talk about their own traumas.
Not to say it was bad (I love those D&Ms, duh). But it is an odd thing to judge someone on — while there’s definitely a market for queens to become speakers both in terms of Drag Con and a much more local space (art talks, readings, interviews, Instagram), I don’t expect every drag queen to be particularly articulate, any more than I expect a pop artist or celebrity to speak eloquently on social issues.
It’s always nice when they can (and as someone who interviews those people, it really helps make things interesting), but for some artists, their work says it all, and interviews or commentary only dilutes their power. Take Jorgeous and Jasmine, who wind up in the bottom but then deliver a wonderful lip sync and both stay. Do I care that Jasmine rambles about ‘uniforms’ and completely diverts the panel’s attention to feminism 101 topics, when she would absolutely kill any club performance?
At the same time, I guess it makes sense that the queens are given a chance to try out one career avenue of being a queer artist. Drag Race‘s challenges were originally modeled off things Ru had done across her career, and while you don’t have to excel at all of them to be successful (certainly didn’t stop some winners, let alone Ru), it never hurts to find you have a secret talent (as I seemingly did on Mardi Gras, via my very odd lower back and shoulder pain stemming from unlocking a new way to dance at some point on Sunday. Talent is used very loosely). Let’s get slaying, mamas, and dive into this slay episode of slayage!!!
Slay Queen Diva etc
After a photobombing mini-challenge, winner Willow Pill gets to pick her four-person panel for this week’s challenge, going with DeJa, Angeria and Lady Camden, leaving Daya a little salty that she’s on “#TeamLeftovers” with Jasmine and Jorgeous (Bosco is there too, but it’s clear that’s not the issue). I’m certain Bosco feels similarly but has a little more tact in hiding it, because Daya isn’t wrong: this challenge requires a real group cohesion, and that’s a little harder here.
*Obvious ‘me on Sunday night’ joke*
In walk-throughs, Lady reveals she’s worried about “looking stupid”, which lets Ru go on one of her favourite spiels about how you have to be stupid in life to have fun and be yourself: it’s annoying because it’s true, and probably why Jorgeous struggles so much in some challenges too.
She gets in her head this week again — in a confessional she says she’s in a “group of bad bitches” who will slay the challenge, but it’s pretty easy to see through it and her ‘sassy’ moments in the challenge that she’s really uncomfortable. But she’s SO young — at 21, I could barely talk to strangers. Drag Race loves a young queen (DeJa is the ‘old’ queen this season at 31…), but I do really miss having the Biancas of the world in a cast, those older figures who know exactly who they are and are happy to mentor the younger Adore-like figures even while competing against them.
There is a real camaraderie in this cast, though, even if this top eight is beginning to feel the tension: the room goes silent as they’re getting ready. This is a really strong group — even J + J would easily have been safe in another cast, as they weren’t ‘bad’ this week. Just less good, which is increasingly the metric in this latter half of the season.
Slay Queen Diva Again IDK Sometimes The Sub-Headlines Really Just Don’t Come To Me But I Need To Break Up The Text, I’m Sorry
This week’s challenge is really hard, because you just have to be yourself. There’s no performing here, or rather, the performing is a performance of authenticity, kind of like a ‘no makeup’ makeup look.
Bosco, the winner, is naturally witty and charismatic, and her puns and well-oiled transitions as moderator work with who she is. DeJa, the other moderator, is just a touch more stitled/performative: there’s a little bit of basic sassiness and “mHmmm!!”-like talk that feels a little forced, even if it does the job. Willow and Angeria are the clear stand-outs alongside Bosco, as both are just so natural and open with their feelings around men, masculinity and drag: it’s a real joy to watch.
I wonder what the outfit brief was for this challenge. They all look so great, though it’s very ‘gay people never dress for the same event’.
The show tries to make a big deal out of Lady’s slip-up in calling Blake Sheldon (yuck, fyi) ‘Blake Lively’ (legend… A Simple Favor turned me bisexual…), but she recovers well and moves out of it, unlike Jorgeous, who is really thrown off by her own word jumbles. Bless Jasmine, who isn’t thrown off at all by her own word-vomits: she’s just so happy to be there, even when she’s flopping (that description of toxic masculinity was very ‘skim-reads Refinery 29‘). I have really, really come around to her in the past few episodes.
Daya foreshadowing Jasmine’s runway look?
I do not have the emotional capacity to detail any of the many traumas and life experiences that these queens detailed, and am stuck in a loop of saying ‘slay’ and ‘yas’ to everything post this weekend. Sorry! Time to move onto the runways.
More Padding Than These Recaps :)
‘Shoulder pads’ is such a simple yet effective runway theme, and DeJa absolutely kills it in a David Byrne-meets-Marge-Simpson-in-Chanel-suit look. It’s easily the best she’s looked all season, and ALMOST her time to win. I’ve been waiting for her to bow out, but if she continues at this level, she might stick around for a while longer.
“I hope she didn’t take my attempt to destroy her too seriously” – me, walking back my claims that DeJa is next to go home.
Bosco comes out in a raincoat in solidarity to NSW and Queensland (thank you king); Angeria pulls off a ‘club kid’ houndstooth fit (ie. it’s so ugly it’s kind of cool, but mostly ugly); Daya continues to prove she’s so much more than a Crystal copy with a butch Mad Max look; Jasmine looks great but like Brook Lynn Heights says on this week’s Pit Stop, needed a belt; Lady’s nutcracker look is fine; Jorgeous clearly had a puffy sleeve look already and hoped it’d be close enough; Willow continues to amaze and astound me.
(Willow also came out as trans this week, making 5 trans queens on this season! We love to see it.) [This is also a good moment to acknowledge that my Lana Del Rey pun headline could be read as that all the queens are men, which is obviously not the intent! Sometimes you just need to reference Lana’s best song, no matter how shoehorned it is.]
I saw almost this exact look like 15 times this weekend.
Maybe the first time Angeria has been mid on the runway.
This is HOT.
Love how ’80s-evil this is.
There’s no way this was custom-made for Drag Race.
I get that this is a reference to both ballet and being British, but I guess the reveal just didn’t really pay off for me.
The way this could exist in Josie & The Pussycats, Spy Kids, The Matrix and Hackers… wow… Willow is just a woman after my own heart.
This week, the tops are Willow, Bosco and DeJa, with Bosco edging out the other two. Our bottoms are Jasmine, Jorgeous and Daya, the last of which makes little sense but it’s getting to that stage in the competition. We get an excellent lip-sync from J+J to Etta James, which makes me realise I’ve never heard this song outside of the Flo Rida and Avicii remixes. I love when ‘dancing queens’ get a slower, older track and absolutely kill it: it proves their talent extends outside of tricks and splits, and both of these queens prove they aren’t just dancers, they’re performers.
The double shantay is a bit anti-climactic in that it does feel like either queen could leave now justifiably — it’s also the fourth non-elimination episode we’ve had so far. This is a long season, and while I miss the tightness of S8’s eight episodes, this isn’t dragging on like S13, where a few too many queens overstayed their welcome.
Next week is Snatch Game, and I have a sinking feeling this might be a moment where the cast falters. Prove me wrong!
RuPaul’s Drag Race S14 is available to stream in Australia on Stan, with episodes dropped each Saturday 3pm AEDT.
Jared Richards is Junkee‘s Drag Race recapper, and a freelancer who writes for NME, The Big Issue, The Guardian and more. He’s across the internet as @jrdjms